Within a few hours, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud has demonstrated that his talk of stepping down as Sarawak Chief Minister is so vague and elastic that he and he alone is the sole decider of what it means – and not even the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak is prepared to cross his path.

Taib is in fact asking for a blank cheque to continue as Sarawak Chief Minister until he could groom a successor and “form a new team” to govern Sarawak – two tasks which may take him the entire term of the next government after he had dismally failed in the past 30 years to prepare for a succession.

When he announced in Serian yesterday morning that he will step down after the next Sarawak state polls, he spawned speculation whether he was talking of a timetable ranging from one to five years.

By the evening, at the Kuching International Airport, he had lengthened the timetable speculation from three to five years! Read the rest of this entry »